Hacker News: ashleyn

New comment by ashleyn in "Florida surgeon charged with killing man after removing liver instead of spleen"

ashleyn — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 13:58:53 +0000

This occurred in Florida. This is but one isolated incident, yet, I can't help but notice the two examples that come to mind (this and Christopher Duntsch) both occurred in states with leadership that champion deregulation. Even if deregulation was the ultimate culprit, it seems inexcusable to me that academic/medical institutions aren't self-regulating effectively despite that.

New comment by ashleyn in "Florida surgeon charged with killing man after removing liver instead of spleen"

ashleyn — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 13:52:31 +0000

Immediately was reminded of another case of a grossly negligent surgeon, Christopher Duntsch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Duntsch

I'm sure I and many other concerned patients and potential-patients are asking; how does something like this even occur? What institutional failures in medicine led to two grossly negligent and incompetent surgeons being given the controls to peoples' lives? What safeguards were neglected at the academic and organisational layers, and what are we doing so that this does not occur again? If institutions are doing their job, no case like this should ever get to the point where a prosecutor needs to stop and clean things up, much less to the first maiming of a patient.

New comment by ashleyn in "Kalshi CEO expects US DOJ to prosecute insider trading cases"

ashleyn — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 23:23:16 +0000

>Prediction markets don't have any "natural" reason like that for excluding insider trading. It's just "game designers" crying their hearts out when someone ruins their game by having an advantage.

I can think of a few very good reasons you would want to prohibit insider trading on prediction markets. Betting on war outcomes; being incentivised to commit war crimes or throw vital operational goals for financial gain. Wagering on public figures' jobs; being incentivised to harm them.

New comment by ashleyn in "German men 18-45 need military permit for extended stays abroad"

ashleyn — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 18:45:40 +0000

This goes missed a lot in debates about conscription. The Iran war in the US and the Ukraine war in Russia enjoy very little popular support among military aged men. This is in stark contrast to WW2, and even in Vietnam there was still a strain of thinking of draft resisters as cowards. But wars in this day and age enjoy a shockingly tiny public mandate, and it's entirely possible that governments can only do a draft on paper. Putin is practically unable to push further mobilisation because the first round provoked such stiff violence and resistance.

New comment by ashleyn in "German men 18-45 need military permit for extended stays abroad"

ashleyn — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 18:35:37 +0000

Right, a lot of the draft law being male-only reflects a combination of the reality that, relatively speaking, not much war has been waged since the end of WW2, and that much of contemporary gender equality is still somewhat new on a historical basis. So they're really just out of date laws with not much of an impetus to update, at least until recently. The worldwide trend is pretty clearly in the direction of making service and conscription, where needed, more gender agnostic. There are still some realities that don't really change here, such as men being most useful for direct combat, so even if women are conscripted it's likely they'll still avoid much of the worst of warfare simply by virtue of not qualifying for stringent standards.

New comment by ashleyn in "German men 18-45 need military permit for extended stays abroad"

ashleyn — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 18:25:23 +0000

Going to assume this phrasing is an awkward translation, but we can see how this works out in tolerant nations with conscription like Thailand. Typically, trans women who are already on a medical pathway are medically excluded from military service. This is less an affirmation of who they are by the military and more of a frank admission that their current state could never be made combat-ready. It's likely that even if SHTF, this would remain the status quo, because it's difficult to imagine draft resisters taking estrogen simply to avoid service. Even if treatment is largely done via informed consent, medical exclusion would likely require blood levels be in a certain range, or certain surgeries performed.

New comment by ashleyn in "Microsoft: Copilot is for entertainment purposes only"

ashleyn — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 16:07:01 +0000

Ah yes, the new "for tobacco use only" of tech.

New comment by ashleyn in "PSA: Top Google Result for Claude Code Is Malicious"

ashleyn — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 16:20:55 +0000

PSA: Adblock is non optional for personal and enterprise security.

My gf told me they blocked all addons at work, including adblock. Told her to recommend to the IT department that adblock be mandatory on all computers. Ad networks make too much money not to look the other way on malvertising.

New comment by ashleyn in "2026 tech layoffs reach 45,000 in March"

ashleyn — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 21:54:17 +0000

It's probably a mix of AI productivity boost and market cycle. There is some substance to AI job loss, but I believe jevons paradox will eventually catch up to transformer-based LLM capabilities.

I'm the last remaining frontend developer after multiple rounds of layoffs. With claude code I'm able to do 2x-3x the work I was able to do before it existed. It's hard for me to rationally argue we need more frontend developers.

New comment by ashleyn in "2026 tech layoffs reach 45,000 in March"

ashleyn — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 21:49:49 +0000

It's a fools errand to ever believe in job security. Even if you're absolutely right on your importance, management can always remain stupid longer than you can remain employed.

New comment by ashleyn in "Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024"

ashleyn — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 19:05:32 +0000

I'd probably view LLM advice like the blind spot indicator on my car. Trust when it's lit. Don't trust when it's not lit.

New comment by ashleyn in "I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978"

ashleyn — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 15:27:55 +0000

This was a very common thing media companies dealt with and still deal with. There are too many legal risks in even reading the idea. SOP is to send back the envelope sealed and with a canned response explaining that they don't accept pitches from the public.

New comment by ashleyn in "I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978"

ashleyn — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 15:24:26 +0000

I often think about how Ask Jeeves had the last laugh in the age of LLM-powered search.

Stoat removes all LLM-generated code following user criticism

ashleyn — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 16:54:30 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/orgs/stoatchat/discussions/1022

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47016050

Points: 40

# Comments: 73

New comment by ashleyn in "Fluorite – A console-grade game engine fully integrated with Flutter"

ashleyn — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 19:41:26 +0000

I feel like "game engine" is a misnomer for what we're actually dealing with here. It's more like an "ECS-based scene rendering engine, which can be used for games or for advanced UI". But that doesn't have a succinct label yet.

New comment by ashleyn in "Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month"

ashleyn — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 20:10:01 +0000

This is the central problem with Citizens United. The supreme court tends to be unusually deferential with 1A cases and ruled that infinite money can go into formally unaffiliated PACs. Undoing this would require activist judges or a constitutional amendment.

New comment by ashleyn in "Data Brokers Can Fuel Violence Against Public Servants"

ashleyn — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 19:28:37 +0000

Better question: What if we actually punished perpetrators of threats and doxing with the existing laws we have against terroristic threats? Why do we treat this as some unstoppable force of nature when the vast majority of them come through traceable methods like mail or phone?

New comment by ashleyn in "Students using “humanizer” programs to beat accusations of cheating with AI"

ashleyn — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 18:44:27 +0000

I'm guessing this "humanizer" actually does two things:

* grep to remove em dashes and emojis

* re-run through another llm with a prompt to remove excessive sycophantry and invalid url citations

New comment by ashleyn in "A lot of population numbers are fake"

ashleyn — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 14:53:55 +0000

Curious what the rules were.

New comment by ashleyn in "Android’s desktop interface leaks"

ashleyn — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 18:21:58 +0000

It appears ChromeOS is being killed and they're porting much of its feature set into Android. This may be marketed as "ChromeOS", with identical functionality, and consumers won't be none the wiser.